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 The Together: Working for Wellbeing Our Space gallery was established at Old Street, London in 2006.
It supports and celebrates all artists in the mental health arena, as well as any external artists or performers who would like to help reduce stigma and prejudice in mental health.
Find out more about our current exhibition and scroll down for information about forthcoming art shows.
Information on our past exhibitions is here. Opening on July 1st, 2009 
1 July - 31 July 2009: ‘Individual Within’ - Art by Tracey Brown
Monday to Friday - 9am to 5pm
Venue - Our Space Gallery, Together:Working for Wellbeing, 12 Old Street, London EC1B 9BE.
Entrance - Free
NB - The Gallery will be closed on standard Bank Holidays
Map: Locate Together's National Office (comprising Our Space Gallery) here.
Public Transport: The nearest tube stations are Barbican and Old Street. The nearest bus routes are 55, 56, 153, 243, 812. Plan your journey here.
Artist Tracey Brown is displaying visual art, personal correspondence and private accounts from her six year journey through paranoid psychosis.
Individual Within sees Tracey explore labels, life and relationships within a suburban community as a reflection of UK society and its attitude to individuality and difference by examining inter-relationships with her neighbours, health and social care services, the police, as well as her ‘voices’ during the period.
The installation includes a developed work book at its ‘centre’, wherefrom a number of images and text have been lifted, having been manipulated, tweaked and wall hung in ‘satellite zones’ around the space. The texts include real letters from medical services, the police and scanned newspaper bytes, each reflective and evocative of Tracey’s perceptions at that time. Projections are also part of this thought-provoking exhibition, which examines the individual’s right to ‘be’ within our society. The audience is invited to journey from each experience or event to the next, giving a unique insight into what it is like to be on the journey through mental ill-health - and a life of constrainment and restriction - to empowerment, liberty, and the ability to communicate one’s own authentic self. 
"Behind the net curtains".
Tracey covered the windows of her suburban home with poems directed at her neighbours.
Themes explored within the installation through real-life events include:
- Being restricted and ‘voice-gagged’ by enforced external control. The fear and anger of being over-taken and imprisoned by apparently ‘superior knowers’ (e.g. when sectioned under the Mental Health Act). The impact of this on the individual and reactions to wider societal freedoms being threatened in this way.
- Isolation and fear within your local community for being ‘different’ and attempts to interact with the local community being rejected.
- The legacy of a mental health label, and your word being devalued because of this, meaning that you might not be taken seriously by the authorities ever again.
Tracey hopes it will inspire others to explore and use their creativity to challenge obstruction, and benefit their own sense of individuality.
Tracey says: “After years of using my creativity privately to get through mental-bad-times, I am thrilled to now be able to share some of this work, which has been possible via the excellent support of Together, and others. I see this exhibition as a first event in an ongoing project, the next stages of which will be developed using in part, any feedback from fellow artists and audience members. I hope the exhibition will be good for those of us who feel unjustly sidelined, whether by personal inspiration or as thought-provocation for some institutional workers within the ‘systems’, that we seek to improve ”.
The installation was made possible thanks to a £5,000 Arts Council Lottery grant, mentoring from DaDA South, support from the National Survivor User Network (NSUN) and the mental health charity Together.
Amy McKelvie at Together says: The Individual Within exhibition is critical, challenging and celebratory, a powerful testament to creativity and individuality”.
About the artist: At age 30, Tracey Brown inverted her career path - from one with lots of money but deep dissatisfaction, to that of study and practice of the Arts, with deep satisfaction but no money. In 2003, after travelling in Europe for a couple of years and sleeping rough, she was sectioned upon her return. Since then she’s been progressively recovering her wellbeing.
Download the exhibition poster (format: Adobe pdf).
All enquiries to: amy-mckelvie@together-uk.org T. 07875 102 787
Supported by the National Lottery Arts Council England
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